Torque's Q&Aviation

[Torque]

Hi friends! A lot of simpletons have been taking shots at my ethos (instead of my logic) by way of a widely known secret that I am currently employed as a helicopter pilot in the US Army. I'd like to take this opportunity to answer any non-private or unclassified questions that anyone has about my job. I'll even ask myself some to kick it off!

1. Are you more or less egotistical than other helicopter pilots?
-Even. I am your typical Joe. All pilots have their own querks, mine happens to be isolation (from social activities and such)

2. What is the most thrilling thing about flying?
-I actually don't enjoy it, and I never have. My stick buddy amusingly summed me up one day after a flight: "You are the only guy I know that got through flight school simply because you had nothing better to do."

3. Why are you such a pud?
-I ALWAYS response to hatred with more hatred, though in different styles. The interwebs is completely ransacked with dickhead attitudes, and I like to suppress that by exaggerating it as a response. When people are nice, I'm very nice to them because I like to perpetuate civility.

4. You are bad and I hate you and I'm better then you.
-Ok bud! But you're gonna have to defend yourself on the position, because it's people like you I get a weird kick out of berating. Happy mudding!

5. What is translating tendency?
-Translating tendency occurs when the helicopter tends to drift in a certain direction depending on which way the main rotor rotates (and subsequently the tail rotor provides thrust). It is very noticeable during a long duration low hover, especially at night. The mechanics behind it is that in my particular helicopter all helicopters with a t/r, the tail rotor actually provides thrust (as opposed to only the main rotor providing thrust), so it's easy to see why the helicopter moves. Think of it as two main rotors, and the one in the back is very weak and pointed to the side.

6. I don't care what you have to say
-That's okay, most people won't. But some people know how to get over themselves/never had that problem, and might enjoy learning about a random topic. I also scored at the bottom of my class - by a wide margin, so I understand that... some people aren't interested in aviation either

7. How do I get involved in helicopters? Is it hard to learn? Where do I start?
-There are many avenues of approach, the most obvious one is to become a pilot. I work with crew chiefs, and while in the regular army they do not fly do not control the helicopter other than verbally or with a pendant that can move the helicopter at a hover at a rate of 5% or less, there are some special operations jobs in which they get stick time -- and it is far easier to become a crew chief than it is to be a pilot. There is zero percent that is natural about flying a helicopter. We make fun of fixed wing guys allllll day because they can literally do nothing for an hour (even on an unautomated bird) and still be flying. If you let go of the controls for more than a couple seconds in a helicopter, you can literally fall out of the sky in an unrecoverable attitude and crash. It's very hard to learn, and it's very hard to master. I will point out that they've told us they were successful in teaching monkeys to hover though!  You start by enlisting in the military, or by acquiring your A&P, or by going to an expensive ass school such as Embry-Riddle, or you pay for private lessons, or you find some other lucrative approach that probably involves one of the aforementioned. I highly highly recommend it, because in a hundred years or less, pilots will just be human placeholders so the occupants don't 'feel' like they are in as much danger from robots.

[Torque]

8. What's your favorite aviation war story to tell?
-There's so many, most of them are about people being hilarious so those are my favorites. There's a handful that I choose not to tell because I don't know the deets/read a full AAR and people died, so those aren't as cool. Ironically most of the stories aren't aviation related, other than involving people who I work with or are in aviation. Here is the one that I tell most frequently:
There was a super freaky intelligent pilot we'll call Bob. He was a walking brain, a little bit older, maybe just younger than ol Gardy by my guesstimates. So the two crews - pilots and customers they were transporting - were hanging out at a MOUT site (building you can practice storming) after a day of training. One of the bang bros, we'll call him Joe, challeneged Bob to a 1v1 MOUT storming match (after much bantering). Bob agreed and they split up on opposite ends of the building. The object would be to shoot the other guy with lipstick rounds (non lethal) and not get shot, pretty simple. The particular MOUT site was roofless.
Because Bob knew it was very unlikely he would win against an infantryman in an infantry game, he took a different approach when someone over the PA announced 'go'. Immediately bob sat down and took his boots off and placed them at the edge of a door, with the toes narrowly exposed from the opposite side of the room. Then he climbed the wall and layed prone on a corner with his weapon ready, and waited. After about 5 minutes of Joe kicking in doors, and being loud about it (since it was taking forever, it should only take about 8-9 door kicks before they found each other), he finally entered the room where Bob was waiting in. Bob could have easily shot him immediately (since Joe did not think to look up), but waited until Joe saw the boots, giggled and snuck up and rounded the corner for a head-on shot. After Joe expertly swung his M4 around the corner with a triple tap, exclaiming "HA!", the moment he adopted a confused look on his face, Bob planted two rounds in his helmet and the match was over. We were dying watching the cam so hard

[Torque]

9. What is the most enjoyable maneuver you perform as a helicopter pilot?
-There are various performance maneuvers that most people get a kick out of, one in particular is 'Combat Flight Maneuvering'. That's the style where you 'peg' out the VSI in crazy degrees: 60 degree roll and a 30 degree dive/climb. The G forces become apparent (we do it at 100 knots), and it's actually a very useful skill to have, well as long as you're in Vietnam in 1968. Today's standards have more computer/radar threat suppression, and wildly spinning about is usefull for only a handful of situations. It's also something I don't enjoy. What I personally enjoy is the line of demarcation.
When you approach a peak in high altitude (so, a mountain) there is this magical place where two different winds hit each other as they pass over a mountain. The object, we've found out, is to 'ride the line of demarcation' down to the peak for a very stable landing. If you know anything about mountains/mountain passes, you'll understand how bad the wind is around it. High altitude training is some of the most dangerous for a helicopter. There's less air density the high you go, and that means there's less lift the blades produce to keep you in the sky, which is why helicopters have a hard time going so high. So not only are you dealing with thin air density, high and unstable wings*, but you're also dealing with the enemy, the radio, your crew in the back, your rate of burn, your trajectory, and also yourself. Being a helicopter pilot is an extremely dangerous and also exciting job. Unfortunately for me, only when all of these obstacles come together in a situation does my brain allow me to have some enjoyment.

*high and unstable winds

[Torque]

10. Do pilots do anything related to maintenance? Do they fly up to the hangar, shut it down and walk away, leaving the crew chiefs to finish the night? Does a pilot know anything practical, or is all of his skillset very niche and therefore impractical?
- I have the fortune of both being a pilot and a previous maintainer. Because I worked on helicopters for a few years, I would consider myself much more competent on the 'practical side' of things than a typical pilot. There are positions like maintenance test pilot, so yes pilots do a lot for the maintenance. What you may be thinking of is true however; there are guys (high school to flight school, or street to seat) who walk in, learn about aerodynamics and weather, and then are strapped to a bird. It's obvious who has no prior enlisted experience as well, and when you mix all that together you generall get a terrible pilot. However! after a few years, maybe 2-3, the distinction diminishes as an unskilled with no background pilot becomes skilled with a little bit of background. So it really only applies at first, and that's when the IP (instructor pilots) have the greatest handle on the pilots anyway. US Army flies *only* two pilot aircraft, and it's overly common to stick the most experience guy with the least experience guy as often as possible. Humorously, there are people who slip through the cracks and still have no fucking clue what's going on in life, other than specifically what they are doing, and they're even bad at that. I was at a table last night and we allllll had a discussion about a particular PC, who was very much a woman, and her woman qualities were very much showing. The problem is that idiots like her put people in danger, so there's no hiding incompetence, otherwise you are contributing to the safety brief. Accidents happen, but it's rare. I believe it's because the aviation-pilot community prefers to be on a first name basis (rather than rank/title and last name), as it promotes an intimate understanding to ensure policing within the community. It actually works out pretty well organically, for being in such a rigid environment (military). Maybe that can help explain why pilots are 'in their own bubble'; they think they're hot shots and all that garbage. Well, they do, because if they fuck up, someone dies. Jet fighter pilots can blow me however.
Also in practice pilots tend to focus on their weaknesses, and when you see people bunch up in cliques to promote their strength and hide their weaknesses, they usually fall face first since people rotate units all the time. So it doesn't really happen, and when it does, a new evaluator will come around and completely rock said idiot's world on a check ride. At this point they go into a critical phase, and if they keep fucking up (since they weren't training their weaknesses), they eventually get peered out or medboarded out, and they're done. It happens frequently

[mr sinister]

cool story bro

[Torque]

cool story bro

mr sinister, thanks for posting! I see you've read number 6:

6. I don't care what you have to say
-That's okay, most people won't. But some people know how to get over themselves/never had that problem, and might enjoy learning about a random topic. I also scored at the bottom of my class - by a wide margin, so I understand that... some people aren't interested in aviation either

If you have any particular questions about my job, feel free to post them here, and I'll answer them without agitating the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

11. How do you kill women and children?
-It's easy: you just watch Full Metal Jacket. Another fortune I have is that I've not dealt any physical damage to any enemy or civilian during my time in the military. It's a very rare thing in aviation, unless you're an attack pilot. There's a bunch of different missions for helicopters, and while attack is one of them, its not the most common, which is transporting troops. 'Lifts' as wel call it are definitely not glamorous outside the army, but since the inherent danger and lack of practical self defense are almost non existant, and also when you include the proximity to the enemy while conducting operations, being a lift inside the army is like being an F1 racer. I'm not actually a lift per say, but I do similar work and I have inserted myself into situations I wish I had not been. Never once did I have to resort to drawing a weapon, instead the question is, "are we going to make it out of here" - here being the LZ/PZ. Fear is a factor, but training easily kicks in and overrides that, except the real fear being what we call a magic bullet. In the same way never-worked-in-life academians study abstract philosophical bullshit mostly in vain, we study the magic bullet theory. It starts like this: "What if... the magic bullet enters the #1 hydraulic pump, ricochets into the backup pump, and exits through the #2 generator. What type of caution lights will you see, in what order, how long do you have to respond, and what applicable emergency procudures can you reference?" Knowing your systems is crucial to making the right decisions, since if you isolate your #2 hydraulic pump in that situation, you will bleed all over your backup pump fluid out within seconds, and then Sikorsky takes over (meaning there's not shit you can do). fun stuff!